Rising almost imperceptibly out of the flat East Anglian landscape a few miles to the southeast of Cambridge, the Gog Magog Hills don't, at first, seem quite to live up to their name. It's only when you ascend their slopes, and find surprising views beginning to reveal themselves, that you realise that you are indeed standing on what Daniel Defoe charmingly referred to as ‘mountains'. Considering the billiard-table geography of East Anglia, and the Gogs' relatively dizzying height of 234ft (71m) above sea level, Defoe may well have been right.

Fields sweep away from the Gogs into the surrounding landscape. Corralled down the slopes by hedges, woods, tracks and roads (notably the A1307 connecting Cambridge to Haverhill), they are interrupted by the villages and farms that dot this part of Cambridgeshire.